


Soft Hands

by diindjariin



Series: Untitled Mando Series [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Female Reader, Fluff, Minor Violence, Slow Burn, WARNING: pedro pascal's hAnDS, also no baby yoda in this one sorry foundlings, give him all the soft things, lots of fluff from mando, sorry the ending is super rushed it's 4:45 am ok i'm tIRED, this is set during episode 5 and makes some minor changes to how mando and toro calican meet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22048126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diindjariin/pseuds/diindjariin
Summary: You’re both sitting at the bar and you notice that the seats next to you and Mando are both empty, despite the place being particularly crowded. You notice the way people look, how they both stare openly and avoid the glint of his armor like the plague at the same time. It’s mesmerizing, the affect he has on others. It’s been months since you joined him and you feel you understand him quite well, especially with the breadcrumbs of his past he’s shared with you. At his core he’s kind, gentle; the sort of man who’d raise a family in the country and would never raise his voice to his wife. He’s bitterly sarcastic, and though he doesn’t speak to strangers much, he talks to you. This you chalk up to his way of life, which discourages friendships and puts focus on criminals and corpses. His past, his upbringing, stifles the man he is when he’s alone with you and the kid and forms a quiet, hard exoskeleton that looks a lot like Beskar armor.
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/You
Series: Untitled Mando Series [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600699
Comments: 12
Kudos: 171





	Soft Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This is part two of my Din Djarin series. Part one is titled "A Mandalorian Hello" and can be found on my AO3.

Life with the Mandalorian is… not what you expected.

Granted, you didn’t have many expectations. Not real ones, anyway. You imagined the word danger followed him wherever he went and pictured evil around every corner, bounty hunters with blasters and arsonists like the ones who destroyed your home. You imagined yourself always on edge, looking behind your shoulder anytime you and the Mandalorian and the Child left the Razor Crest.

This was true for the first week or so. Well, not the bounty hunters hiding around every corner. But the nervousness, the paranoia, remained. You’re not one to be afraid of ghosts, but the men who kidnapped you left behind a small haunting. Mando noticed, too.

“What’s wrong?” He asks. The three of you sit at a table in the corner of a small restaurant on some backwater planet. You’d stopped for food and fuel and now the three of you sat together, Mando feeding the child soup while you ate your own. You’d assumed you’d be feeding the little one by the spoonful but Mando had taken the spoon right out of your hand, pushing your own soup towards you and nodding down at it. You smiled and ate on your own, but without the Child to distract you, you began to feel antsy again, your gaze shifting across the room slowly and deliberately.

“What? Nothing,” you say in return, forcing your eyes to meet the slit in his visor. “Why?”

“You keep looking around the room. Did somebody… do something?” He pauses before he asks his question and you feel as though he’s choosing his words carefully, leaving the question open-ended so you’ll be more forthcoming. He’s relaxed, left arm resting over the back of the booth. The child sits on his left side and with his right hand the Mandalorian feeds him. Now, though, the spoon rests loosely in his fingers and his attention is completely on you.

“No, no, it’s just,” you shift your gaze and look down at the tabletop instead, “I guess I just want to be on guard, you know? For the kid. What if someone’s behind the trashcan, ready to hurt him as soon as one of us lets our guard down?” He doesn’t respond for some time so you raise your eyes to look at him again. The Mandalorian stares right at you, silent. You can only imagine what his expression says, behind the mask. He leans forward, arms folding across each other and elbows resting on the tabletop.

“My guard is never down. Relax. Leave the protecting to me, okay?” You smile at that, shyly, cheeks tinting a pretty shade of coral.

“O-okay,” you respond, reaching across the table to pat his hand, “I’ll remember that. But you should remember to do that as well. At least when we’re alone on the ship.” Mando nods once and uncrosses his arms, giving the Child his attention again and continuing to feed him. You make small chitchat with Mando while you eat and pet the Child’s ears. After about ten minutes you realize you haven’t checked the cantina. You stare at Mando instead.

You take his advice.

You let your guard down. Stop expecting enemies behind every door, danger in the shadows. You move with a looseness in your shoulders that you haven’t felt in years and let yourself appreciate the wonder that is this galaxy. He takes you to Nephele, where you see snow for the first time, and Sorgan, where trees and grass swayed in the warm breeze like flags. You let yourself relax, which is probably what gets you into this problem in the first place because –

Because he told you to relax, and to enjoy yourself, on Sorgan at least. “Enjoy yourself,” he said when he declined your invitation to swim with a quiet shake of his head, “don’t let me slow you down.”

So this is you… enjoying yourself. You’ve made a pitstop on Tatooine – you need repairs and money and Mando’s been here before. The Child is alone on the Razor Crest; usually you’d stay with him while he slept and Mando got work, but you’re feeling crowded. You’ve been stuck on the Razor Crest for two weeks and the Mandalorian can tell you’re feeling the need to stretch your legs because he feels it too. He suggests the Mos Eisley cantina; it’s a solid candidate for him to find work and it’s an excuse for you to stock back up on wine. But his initial request for work is unsuccessful and he said to loosen up so you… have some wine.

You’re both sitting at the bar and you notice that the seats next to you and Mando are both empty, despite the place being particularly crowded. You notice the way people look, how they both stare openly and avoid the glint of his armor like the plague at the same time. It’s mesmerizing, the affect he has on others. It’s been months since you joined him and you feel you understand him quite well, especially with the breadcrumbs of his past he’s shared with you. At his core he’s kind, gentle; the sort of man who’d raise a family in the country and would never raise his voice to his wife. He’s bitterly sarcastic, and though he doesn’t speak to strangers much, he talks to you. This you chalk up to his way of life, which discourages friendships and puts focus on criminals and corpses. His past, his upbringing, stifles the man he is when he’s completely vulnerable and forms a quiet, hard exoskeleton that looks a lot like Beskar armor.

You’ve watched him talk to the kid when he thought you’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat, stroke his ears and hand him the ball knob off one of the ship’s controls. You’ve watched him patiently explain to the Child that he can’t touch buttons he’s not supposed to, and to listen to me for once, okay? He splashed water in your hair on Sorgan and chuckled when you squealed, let you win at a thumb war, offered you a place to live when your kindness had lost you your home. There’s softness in him that makes your chest feel tight and your cheeks turn coral and you weep for the life that he could have had. He’s eternally grateful to the Mandalorians for taking him in and giving him a home but you wonder what he’d do with all this softness if he’d been allowed the simple pleasure of touch. You wonder what it does to a man when he’s never been called handsome before, never felt love echo through the thin skin of lips.

“…? Did you hear me?”

“What?”

“I asked if you’re drunk,” says Mando and after months of living together you’ve categorized the minute differences in his tone of voice as facial expressions. His voice is deeper and slightly muffled which tells you he’s talking out the side of his mouth because he’s smirking at you.

“Drunk? No. I just… spaced out there for a minute. I’m here. With you.” You add the last part because you feel it’s important that he knows that you know he’s here. He shakes his head slightly and looks away from you.

“No more for you,” he says, holding his palm up in a gesture of no when the bartender raises the wine bottle and shakes it at you. He nods and returns it to the rack. You take his wrist in your hand and he stills, the muscles in his shoulders tensing up. You pull on his arm until he relaxes and allows you to put his hand in your lap. “What are you doing?” he asks, his voice flat and neutral. You can tell the tone is purposeful.

“I used to read fortunes for my friends from their palms,” you explain, curling your small fingers around his thick ones. “I read how to in a book years ago. I don’t really believe in it, but it’s fun. Can I try it on you?” His gaze is level with yours for several seconds without saying anything until he slowly inches his eyes down to where your hands are connected. He pulls his hand out of yours and the open smile you had before falters a bit, corners of your mouth tipping down. But he brings his gloved hand to the other and pulls on the tip of his index finger, squeezing the glove off his hand and returning it to yours. You smile so big you’re sure you look absolutely plastered.

“Okay okay,” you say, pushing up your sleeves and delicately stroking your right index finger down his palm. He whole body shivers, which makes you do it again. “You have a deep life line, which tells me you’re going to live for a long time. Probably all that bounty hunter training,” you tell him, smirking. You look back down at his hand, turning it this way and that and humming to yourself. “Oh!” you exclaim, which makes him jump a bit, “that’s interesting.”

“What?” he asks, leaning closer into your space.

“Your head line is incredibly short; must be why you run into everything head-on instead of thinking before your actions. Your palm says you lack smarts.” The smirk you send his way is villainous. You stare into the “T” of his visor and add, “Your element seems to be water, but I see you more as a fire type, myself.” By now there’s almost no space separating the two of you and you aren’t even looking at his palm anymore, thumb slowly drawing circles over the soft skin. You’re sure that if he wasn’t wearing his helmet, your noses would be close to touching. “But I’ve saved the most important one for last.”

“Which is?” he asks. The words are flippant but his voice is husky and thick. It makes you swallow hard.

“Love line. I don’t even have to look at it to know it’s long and deep. Anyone who sees you with the kid would see that.” And then you do something that can only be explained through liquid courage; you bring his hand up to your lips and press a soft kiss to his knuckles. His whole body jerks like a livewire and you smile at him innocently. The only message you’re trying to send with the act is genuine affection and you’re sure he hasn’t experienced that since he was a boy because he’s so caught off guard.

He says nothing, but a soft, strangled noise ripples from inside the helmet.

And then he’s standing on weak legs and insisting he needs to use the refresher, disappearing so quickly that you blink and feel a bit of whiplash. You watch him retreat to the back of the cantina and disappear behind a wall and it’s only when he’s gone from your sight that you feel your heart beating stronger than usual. You signal the bartender over and ask for a glass of water when you feel your head spin a bit.

“A Mandalorian, huh? Didn’t know they had girlfriends,” says a voice behind you. You turn and find a man with a glass in one hand and a cigarra in the other.

“Oh, I’m not his girlfriend,” you say quickly, and though the words are true they seem wrong somehow. A man in a bar inquiring about your relationship status shouldn’t be given such an opening when Mando is so important to you.

“My apologies Miss,” he says, eyes raking up and down your entire figure. You squirm a bit under his gaze. “I heard your… bodyguard inquiring about work earlier. I can’t offer him anything, but if you’d be interested, there’s a few tricks you could do with your mouth that I’d be willing to pay a hefty price for.” Your mouth drops open so fast that your lips make a smacking noise when parted. Did he just say… You have no idea how to respond. When you’d worked in a similar establishment back on your home world, you didn’t really get customers like him. Mostly just the same people day in and day out, drinking away their problems. Never had a man been so blatantly disrespectful to you in your entire life that you gape like a fish rather than respond. Then your gaze flicks upwards and you see the one person you both simultaneously want to intervene and hope didn’t hear a single thing that came out of that man’s mouth.

“What did you say?” Asks the Mandalorian. The man slowly turns from you to Mando and shrugs, raising his hands up in defense.

“Nothing, nothing,” the man says, backing up slowly. Despite trying to make a retreat he doesn’t look scared of Mando in the slightest. You think that’s a mistake.

“That’s what I thought,” Mando says, throwing some credits on the bar top and offering you his hand. You take it and use the stability of his body to shimmy your weight off the barstool. Stumbling a bit and landing directly into his arms. His right hand instinctively circles around the back of your head and brushes a lock of hair behind your ear.

“Didn’t think Mandalorian’s kept prostitutes,” the man says flippantly, shrugging his shoulders and letting his hands rest at his sides. “But I suppose you learn something new every day. Did you buy her here? I’ve never seen a woman this beautiful owned by a Hutt –” That seems to be the last straw for the Mandalorian, because he pulls his fist back and punches the man right in the jaw. He goes down hard, face red when Mando hit him and you’re a lot more sober now than you were a minute ago. Mando doesn’t wait for the man to get up and have a proper fight, grabbing you by the upper arm and dragging you out of the cantina instead. His face is grueling and your legs, much shorter than his, struggle to keep up. The lines of his shoulders are rigid and you can tell he’s pissed.

“Mando,” you say softly, “slow down.” He doesn’t. You squirm a little but his grim just tightens. “Hey, you’re hurting me,” you say even softer and immediately he releases you as if he’s been burned, stopping in his tracks and turning back to you.

“I’m sorry,” he says gently. You smile tightly and say,

“It’s okay.” The two of you stand in the sand, breathing heavily, staring at each other. Finally you say, “I’m… sorry.”

“What for?” He asks, sounding genuinely confused. Your brows furrow together and you respond,

“For… the guy. You know.” He helmet tilts to the side in thought.

“Why are you apologizing? Guy was a creep. I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he says, hands resting gently on his hips.

“I shouldn’t have let my guard down,” you say, voice holding an air of disappointment in yourself. Mando shakes his head and rests his hand on your shoulder.

“What did I tell you? Leave your guard down when you’re with me. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have walked off after you’d had a few.”

“What, am I to follow you into the ‘fresher now?” You ask, letting a hint of teasing into your voice. Now that the immediate threat was over you were dying to have sarcastic Mando back. He lets out a sharp huff from under his helmet and you know he’s smirking.

“If that’s what it comes to,” he says the words on a sigh, no real threat behind them, but the worry is real. You shake your head and feel your cheeks heating up, as has grown to be a custom when around him.

“Maybe I should… carry a blaster around. I know I keep one on the ship when you’re gone but maybe I should actually have one. You taught me to shoot on Sorgan. I wasn’t too bad.” He nods his head in agreement. Footsteps come from behind and you whip around to see a man from the cantina who’d sat on the opposite end of the bar jogging over to the two of you.

“I heard you need work,” the man cried as he got closer. With his right hand, Mando pulls his blaster from its holster and points it at the man. With his left, he pulls you behind him.

“You try anything and I drop you,” Mando says. The man raises his arms in a placating manner and shakes his head vigorously,

“No, stars, I’m a bounty hunter. I need help with my first puck. We can work together; you keep the reward if I get the glory. Deal?” The Mandalorian thinks about it, turns to look back at you. You nod at him.

“Meet me at hanger three-five in half an hour,” says the Mandalorian, “and bring speeder bikes.” The kid nods and disappears. You and Mando share a look.

“We should get back to the ship; the kid’s probably awake by now and in need of affection. I’ll stay with him while you go make us some money.” The Mandalorian nods and begins walking back, knowing you’ll follow without hesitation. It’s nice to know about that security, comforting. When he turns to look, you’re jogging to keep up with his strides. He smiles, something he does a lot more often since you’ve come into his life, and walks.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it foundlings - more guys being creeps and more soft Mando. Part of me wonders if I'm writing him out of character, but then I think about how utterly SOFT he is in the last episode (and in the entire series tbh) and then I think no. Also: I'm thinking of doing a separate modern AU with an OC rather than the reader/you perspective - would anyone be interested in that? Let me know!
> 
> If you'd like to check out my tumblr, it's @diindjariin.  
> If you'd like, I'd appreciate it if you'd reblog the post for this fic on tumblr:  
> https://diindjariin.tumblr.com/post/189973806611/soft-hands-din-djarin-x-reader-part-i-here#


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